Tinder-Like App Lets Dutch Renters Swap Houses

Dutch social renters wanting to move to a new apartment can now use an app to swap houses with other renters. One precondition, both renters need to ‘like’ each other’s apartment to get a match.

Since a few months, social renters in the Netherlands can use an app to browse rental apartments. The app, called ‘Huisjehuisje’ (Little House x2), is designed for renters that are looking to move to a new rental apartment. Huisjehuisje shows the user other renters’ apartments that are up for a trade. The app user can ‘like’ the apartments he or she finds attractive. Those that are not to their liking they can swipe to the left. If two renters like each other’s apartment, they are matched. The main idea behind Huisjehuisje is that more people can find a place to live that suits their current desires and needs.

Huisjehuisje is born out of a crowded rental sector in the Netherlands. With the lack of affordable and available rental properties, young renters often have a difficult time entering the rental sector. Only those with a long registration time with the social rental organizations may find their way into small apartments. With Huisjehuisje, project leader Pieter Schipper hopes to make it easier for young renters to find an appropriate apartment. Young renters with small apartments may swap with older residents who live in bigger apartments. In this way, the issue of scheefwonen (skew living — when people live in apartments that do not match their needs and desires) within the Dutch rental sector could be solved. The reality of this mismatch of living conditions and needs is shown by Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. NRC Handelsblad reports that research of municipalities and housing councils around the city of Amsterdam have found that 52% of Dutch households want to move within the next 2 years. Only 1 out of 13 renters eventually manages to move.

Housing market professor Peter Boelhouwer of the Technical University in Delft sees potential in Huisjehuisje. He thinks that the app will enable those who are afraid to lose their registration time (which happens after you move house), and end up waiting for the perfect apartment to show up. Huisjehuisje will help them as it renters maintain their registration time after they swap. However, users need more than just getting a match. After two apartments are matched, the users are introduced to each other, after which they have to find out if their rental agreements are compatible enough for the renters to swap house. Nevertheless, the app offers 330,000 rental apartments from 26 housing associations in the central part of the country. This opens up new opportunities for many who are unable to succeed in the conventional ways of finding a suitable home.

To reflect on the ecology and the biodiversity of two sites on opposite sides of London, art and research collective London Fieldworks built a sculptural installation in a two trees in the city. ‘Spontaneous City in the Tree of Heaven’ consists of several hundred bespoke bird boxes mounted in two trees, resulting in a true…

Hong Kong Outside is the book that comes with its counter part Hong Kong Inside — the book we reviewed on Friday. Both books are photographic collections made by Michael Wolf and published in a beautiful cassette by Peperoni Books. Hong Kong Outside is about the facade of a city that develops in a incredible pace on a small piece of land.

Hackney-based architecture studio Levitt Bernstein has won a housing competition with a proposal to turn disused parking garages in London into flexible homes. The competition, organized by the Building Trust, asked architects and (urban) designers to come up with ideas to tackle the shortages of affordable single-occupancy housing. Levitt Bernstein’s idea suggests instant transformation of empty parking garages in Hackney into houses for homeless people by insertion of pre-fab structures. The structures allow for easy assembling and can be inhabited immediately.

Speaking about interesting spaces, two weeks ago I joined an excursion through the ‘problematic’ neighbourhood of North Rotterdam. Halfway we passed this incredible semi-public combination of a passageway and a house. How does that work? In order to connect a new permanent indoor style warehouse with a traditional shopping street suffering from vacancy, housing association…